I licked my dry lips. “Thank you.”

“Come on.” As he keyed in the code to his door, he nodded toward the home next door. “Just so you know, the guy who lives next door is also my teammate. His name’s Alix, and he stops by. I’m sure you’ll meet him. Blond hair, French accent… he’s hard to miss. But he’s a good friend and an even better guy. Has a younger sister back home in Switzerland he wishes he could move out here.”

“Okay…”

The door beeped, the lock unclicked, and he pushed open the heavy, black wood door.

“What I’m trying to tell you, Emmersyn, is that you’re safe here, yeah?”

I was a woman who’d lived her life in Boston. Grew up on the streets of a major city and was taking the subway by myself at the age of twelve but was as equally used to being driven around in a limo or town car. Safety had never been my concern or my fear. I carried mace and always wore a bracelet with an emergency alert. Perhaps I’d always considered myself invincible.

I wasn’t though. I had just never imagined that the worst possible danger to me was a man I thought I’d spend forever with.

I swallowed the thick rise of emotion threatening to release from my throat and nodded.

“Thank you,” I whispered, right as a yawn hit. I covered my mouth and stepped in as Kane held the door for me.

Once it was shut, he locked it, hit a bunch of numbers on a blinking pad by the door, and another series of beeps on the security system followed. “I’ll give you the code tomorrow. Let’s get you to bed, okay?”

“Thank you,” I said, hand still covering my mouth. “It’s been a long day.”

“You want a tour now or a room?”

Everything was modern from the little I could see. Black metal railings and dark, shining wood floors. Straight in front of us, past a living area, was a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and as he flipped on lights in the small hall, our reflection appeared, along with a mirror image of his modern, masculine, and black metal loft-style home with an exposed ceiling.

I wanted a tour of this place, but my knees wobbled.

A bed had never sounded so good.

“Room, please.”

“All right.” He walked around a pool table beyond the kitchen bar where three black metal stools with dark wood seats were on the way to the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, he pointed out his room at the opposite end of the hall, closed off with French doors. A hall bathroom. Two more closed doors, and at the opposite end of the landing we stood on, one more door.

“You can have this one. It has an attached bathroom. I usually let my family and Heather stay in this one when they visit. That okay?”

“Wonderful.” My eyes closed slowly, and I forced them open.